2008 Dodge Grand Caravan SXT

Third Place: Space Shuttles

This freshly baked Grand Caravan would have fared better in this comparison if it connected the driver more with the road. This is a quiet machine, the best here along with the Toyota, with very little road noise. It rides smoothly, too, although it loses its composure when the road turns rough. But it's isolated in that indifferent way that keeps the driver from feeling in charge. It's numb to the touch where it's not off-putting. The crude feel of the dash-mounted gear is a good example.

The new 4.0-liter SOHC V-6 is a strong performer, showing taillights to all others in the acceleration tests except the Toyota. The Dodge is quiet as it works, too. Braking from 70 mph required the longest distance of all, 203 feet. Brake-pedal feel is superb. Skidpad grip was made to look bad, at only 0.71 g, by the intrusive stability-control system. Still, we're high on skid control, and we give it at least part credit for the Dodge's good showing through the lane-change test, second best behind the Hyundai.

Chrysler's long experience satisfying minivan customers really shows in the cleverness of the interior features. The Stow 'n Go second row, which can be lowered flat into the floor with only modest muscle, is a masterpiece of accommodating design. Those seats also slide themselves away from the door as they make a passage to the third row. When they're up in the family-hauler mode, they leave behind empty compartments under hinged lids. Mom is impressed. "A huge advantage," she says, for holding all the things kids need these days to amuse themselves.

If we have a reservation about Stow 'n Go, it comes down to the rickety feeling of the mechanism. Can this possibly hold up for five or 15 years? Another problem: Reaching under the captain's chairs for the slider latch can lead to a major finger pinch; one editor's digit still hadn't healed a week after the test.

Even more rickety is the optional console between the front seats. Mom loves the way it opens wide, providing a purse-hiding zone, and it cleverly slides rearward in two stages to offer a lunch table for the second row. But all these loose-tolerance sliders make it a wobbly apparatus that surely embarrassed Daimler halfway to divorce court.

Everywhere you look around the Grand Caravan's interior you see cup holders and storage niches. The front doors each have two-story bins for holding odds and ends, the dash has stacked glove boxes, the center of the dash has pop-out cup holders and more small cubbies on the way down to a spaniel-size open bin at the bottom. You could lose your mind in this poly-compartmentalized interior and never find it again.

Clever, but the interior has a cheap-motel look about it, too, with plastic gestures everywhere--obvious plastic, blatant plastic. Chrysler makes impressive claims for the stain resistance of its YES Essentials interior fabrics. Great idea. Unfortunately, even when clean, the look is plebeian.

Maybe minivan customers, eyes fixed on cup holders and storage bins, simply see more utility when they behold these materials. But such appointments might have something to do with the category's sagging popularity, too.

Verdict:

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